17/04/2018 - JOHN INNES CENTRE BOARD SKETCH

After deciding on a general direction and voice which I wanted my work to convey, I created my sketch. I lifted some of the architectural designs directly from the patron portraits, and also featured some of the same objects I had seen within the archive. I chose to use a modern version of technology such as the microscope, as I wanted my piece to be very much of the modern day, a present example of the old portraits based on our modern understanding and situation within the world. Some pieces such as the bell jar and hourglass instead appear here as vintage remnants of the old ways. I will play more deeply with the symbolism and specific meanings implied here when translating my composition to the larger final piece. However already here we have ivy growing over the microscope and rest of the scene, showing the permenance of the force of nature in comparison to the temporary nature of the things we create and do. Beneath the bell jar I have placed a Thylacine skull, an extremely unique predatory marsupial which long ago existed across both Australia and Tazmania, before becoming extinct in both across the 20th century, due to suspected changes in climate and pressures from the indigenous peoples and farming.

 The Thylacine case has always interested me, as it is one of the more iconic examples of animals which went extinct around the time of the invention of photography, so tangible physical evidence of these characters exists as living beings, instead of the dead fragments and shadows left behind. This makes it one of the most powerful examples of how an entire unique being can be consigned to history by changes in ecology.

I also featured some examples of heritage Einkorn wheat, with many smaller grains and lengthy awns (spikes coming from the wheat grains). This was one of the first domesticated varieties of wheat, and is something many modern day peoples are being forced to return to in their diet as modern complex varieties cause upward correlations in wheat intolerance and coeliac disease. Aswell as this I sketched in a butterfly form, and planned to do more research ahead of working on my final design to find a species with useful connotations or context. Finally there was the oak tree bordering the left hand side of my image, an old English ecological staple with further connotations of wisdom and heritage. Concepts of time, age, impermenance and permenance in relation to nature were starting to emerge ever more strongly in this piece.